secret life of denise

My mother sent me these photographs of her when she was doing research in Brazil, figuring out how small rainforests could be until they stopped being able to support themselves as rainforests. They were taken in 1981, and the hunky sharpshooter standing with her was her last boyfriend before she met my father in Iowa City a year later, a guy named Rob Bierregaard. She wrote to me and said on the phone that these pictures are proof that she used to be cool. I told her that I'm pretty sure that these pictures are proof that she is cool, which she liked to hear. Will I wonder the same thing about myself in thirty years? Good question.